How Maid Brigade Jacksonville Rebuilt a Declining Franchise by Putting Its Maids First

Who runs Maid Brigade Jacksonville, and how did she get there?

Jay Archer owns the Maid Brigade location in Jacksonville, Florida with her husband Ken. She came to it from the other side of franchising. By her count she had spent about 30 years in franchise development, helping other people get into business, and both she and Ken, a business consultant, had always wanted to own something themselves.

None of the concepts she worked on appealed to her as an owner. Then she went to work in franchise development at Maid Brigade’s office in Atlanta, and a few months later the Jacksonville location came up. “The weather’s warm. They got the ocean. Let’s see if we can make this work,” she recalled the two of them saying.

She describes the company as “the Ritz Carlton of house cleaning”: focused on customer service, with a real training and vetting program, and the same faces showing up at the same homes.

What was wrong with the location when she took it over?

The business had been declining and its reputation had suffered. The original owner had been very successful. The person who bought it from her, Jay said, expected to sit behind the desk while the business ran itself. Sales fell until he called the home office to say he was shutting it down. A Maid Brigade vice president and another franchisee stepped in to run it for a while, and then Jay and Ken took it over.

They started on Independence Day in 2010. Ken was still mostly in Atlanta, so Jay ran it day to day. The last half of that year was rough.

How did she rebuild the company’s reputation?

By going back to the basics of the customer relationship, in person. Jay rode along with the teams and met customers so they knew who the new management was. What she told them:

• Who would be coming to their house, and what would be done differently.
• What would not change. If a customer had a good relationship with their maid, the pairing would stay.
• That problems would be dealt with. She asked for feedback and used it for coaching, “or something a little more serious.”

Then she called customers back to check. In the early days she also cleaned houses herself, and some weekends Ken did too. Customers needed to know the house would get cleaned one way or another, and the maids needed to know the owners respected the work.

Once the first of the year came around, momentum built. Even the customers they had retained could see the difference, and Jay says the location has grown ever since.

Why does Maid Brigade Jacksonville put employees before customers?

Because the maids are the ones who take care of the customers. Jay said the surprise of owning the business was how attached she and Ken became to the staff, each of whom has something difficult going on in her life. They set out to give them a place to work where they were “valued and respected and, dare I say it, loved.”

The result is longevity. Some maids have been there 10 years. Kelly, who handles all customer service, has been with Jay for 13 years and started as a maid.

It shows up in the homes too. One maid arrived as a client’s husband slipped getting out of the shower and helped get him into bed. Another found a client who had fallen on her garage floor, got her up and called her family. The day before the interview, a couple walked into the office with a tray of cookies for their cleaning team.

How did the marketing change from coupons to Google?

It moved online as customers did. Jay did little marketing at first, on purpose, until customer relationships and staffing were in order. The early channels were mailed coupon packs sent to thousands of homes and door hangers. Both worked for a while and then quit working.

“When you want something, you can go right to the internet and find everything you want to know,” she said, so that is where the company focused. Its “pure cleaning” process gave it something to talk about: a machine in the office uses electrolyzed water to make a degreaser and a disinfectant. The location had adopted it before Covid, so when the pandemic arrived, “we were ready.”

What would she tell a first-year owner?

Do not give up, and take care of your people first, then your customers. Talk to customers and build the relationship before you ask for anything. When Jay did ask for a review, she put it this way: help other people find a service that cares.